Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Chicago Now offers readers tips on how to sync their Halloween costume to the local weather forecast:

Maybe it's time to rethink that skimpy costume, anyway. Now you have a good excuse to go for a more creative and weather-appropriate option. Embrace the cold and wind. Here's your chance to be a Wuthering Heights romantic, a sweater girl, a lineman for the county, or maybe even the football hero you wish you could be (we sure could use one, now...). (Weather Girl)

And if you want more than just a costume, here's what's happening on Halloween on the other side of the pond (in London), as listed by The Telegraph.

Kate Bush and Wuthering Frights. For an unusual Halloween twist, try this Kate Bush-themed party where the best Kate Bush costume and re-enactment of Cathy at Heathcliff’s window (a scene from the book Wuthering Heights) and the best drawing of a horse will be awarded. There will be DJs playing songs from Kate Bush and others as well as a retro smoke machine.When: October 31-November 1; 8pm-1amWhere: The Three Compasses, DalstonPrice: FreeDetails:3compasses.blogspot.co.uk (Soo Kim)

And speaking of Kate Bush we can't overlook the fact that China Drum's take on her Wuthering Heights has made it to number 15 on the list of Greatest Covers compiled by BBC Music. This is what Metro says about it:

Wuthering Heights – China Drum
A scarily rousing version of the Kate Bush masterpiece from the US rock band. What would Emily Brontë say? (Chris Hallam)

But there's nothing wrong with recognizing that the circumstances of an author's life can make a work more poignant. Henry James’s desperate love for his cousin Minnie Temple is the lifeblood that keeps The Wings of the Dove—a famously dense novel—alive. The torment Charlotte Brontë suffered over unrequited love pulses through Villette, the pseudo-biographical story of a teacher at a girls school in Belgium who falls passionately in love with a married fellow teacher. Understanding the isolation and despair Brontë felt when she was sent to teach (and send home money) at a similar school—and then the devastation of her own attachment to a certain M. Héger—elevates Villette from a middling novel to a fascinating, if problematic, one. Similarly, knowing that this was to be "the saddest thing I’d ever written," as Faber told the Times, and that Faber inserted the married couple's storyline after learning of his wife's terminal diagnosis, grants the epistles an added richness. (Hillary Kelly)

Literary works that have influenced you.
I grew up reading the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and many others. Later, I fell in love with and admired the novels of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James and other great American novelists. Their technique of writing, choice of universal themes as well as an emphasis on realistic portrayal of characters and circumstances influenced me a great deal. (Ipshita Mitra)